


A Boy and His Car: Fred's Side

by Mathais



Series: A Boy and His Car [2]
Category: Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Power Rangers Turbo
Genre: Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-05
Updated: 2010-10-05
Packaged: 2017-10-15 01:08:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/155430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mathais/pseuds/Mathais
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fred would never let anything get between him and his friends, former mentor or said friend be damned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Boy and His Car: Fred's Side

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own Power Rangers and the things associated with it; they belong to Saban.

"No."

Fred's arm was steady as it barred access into the room. He had known that this time would come, and, to be frank, it had scared the crap out of him, but he surprised himself with how calm he was. He stared up at someone who had once been his mentor and tightened his lips. "No," he repeated.

Tommy stared back. "I need to see him."

Fred quelled the bitter laugh that rose in his chest and instead turned it into a twist of his lips. "He doesn't want to see _you_."

"Look, Fred, I know—"

"And just _what_ do you know?" Fred snapped as irritation and indignation welled up in him. "He doesn't want to see you, end of story."

"And if I don't see him, we can't fix whatever's broken," Tommy quietly said.

He forced back the tears in his eyes. "And don't you think it hurts enough already?" Acid burned in his tone.

"Fred," Tommy began in a steely tone. He reached forward to bodily move him out of the way.

Fred _moved_ when Tommy left himself open and buried his fist into Tommy's gut. Tommy sunk to the ground with a pained cry, but Fred didn't care. "No, you won't get by."

Tommy got to his feet with a grimace. His face was set in stubborn stone, but when Fred raised his fists and fell into a loose fighting stance, he seemed to reassess his plan of action. Tommy nodded sharply and warned, "This isn't over."

"I'll be here again," Fred replied, tone just as hard.

They locked gazes for a second longer before he turned and left.

Fred shuddered as he quite nearly sank to his knees. God, he knew that if Tommy had pushed, Fred would've been tossed to the side easily. But he would've made enough noise to draw everyone's attention, and rumors be damned. Tommy was not getting close enough, not yet. So he steeled his resolve and put on his best smile and went back into the room.

Justin looked up and said shortly, "I don't need a protector."

The fake smile slipped off his face. "I know."

"Then why?" His voice was cold and more than a little angry, but it disappeared when Fred replied.

"Because I'm your friend." Fred slipped back into his chair and desperately wished he had his cap so that he could cover his eyes. "I'm your friend Justin, so if I can help you out in any way, I will."

Fred tried to find the problem he left off at when he saw Tommy coming in the silence that followed. He was about to reach for his pencil when Justin said, "Thank you," sincerely. Fred looked up and noticed the way that Justin softened, the way that the tension around his eyes loosened and that his lips quirked into a half-smile that so familiar because, for so long, it was the best that they'd gotten out of him, and he definitely had to choke back the tears as he looked back down. "I could have handled it though. I could have told him—"

"—but he doesn't deserve to talk to you!" Fred burst out without meaning to. "He doesn't fucking deserve to meet you, not after the way he just left you. Not after the way they all just left and came back like nothing, expecting things to be all right! He didn't have to deal with it all." The words just launched themselves from his mouth, and he didn't dare look up to see what effect they had on Justin. "The sleepless nights worrying, all the things we did to get you outside and doing something other than locking yourself in a lab or at the gym, all of the anger and the silences." He felt Justin slide his arms around him, and it gave him the strength to say, "He didn't have to organize a fucking suicide watch because we were all so scared that you hated everything too much."

Arms tightened in shock, and he heard Justin whisper, "Fred..."

"He just can't come back after all this time without anything and expect things to be fine, that he has the right to do so," Fred said hoarsely. "He just can't."

He was held, trembling, by Justin as he sobbed quietly. Just having this comfort, just having Justin even strong enough to do this for him—it was more than any of them could have asked.

"I'm sorry, Fred." Justin's voice was just a whisper in his ear. "For putting you all through this trouble."

"We care too much to let you go," he said.

"And I thank you guys for it. I never hated the world enough for that, but... You guys gave me faith again. Especially you, Fred. You gave me that first push."

Fred remembered that day very vividly.

  
**OoOoO**   


"No more excuses," Fred said as he tore off the covers. "No more waiting."

"Fuck you," Justin spat out, now revealed as curled up on his bed in nothing but a loose pair of boxers. "Get out of here!"

Fred crossed his arms over his chest and raised an eyebrow. "Or what?"

"Just, fuck you."

Fred stared down at his friend, at the defiant gaze and the pain with it, and his lips curled into an uncommon sneer. "You only wish. You're getting up, and you're getting out of here. I'm tired of this, Justin."

"Then just leave! Get the fuck out of here and leave me alone!"

"I can't," he said calmly. "I won't."

Justin continued to curse him out with language that grew more acidic by the second, but Fred weathered it all with a calm look and an arched brow. He was not intimidated by the _boy_ sitting on the bed with tousled hair, even if that boy was far more muscular than him.

"Son of a bitch, just leave me alone!"

Justin's head was snapping back before he even realized he'd moved, and then came the delicious burn in his knuckles from the right impact against flesh. Fred's face still held its calmness, but there was a flicker of anger in his eyes. "Say what you want about me, but don't you _dare_ talk about my mom like that."

Justin's jaw was beginning to swell, but he still managed to mutter, "Sorry."

"Now get your ass out of bed." Fred punctuated his statement by reaching over and tugging at Justin's wrist. "We're going out for lunch."

Justin didn't say anything, for a moment Fred thought that he'd refuse, but he slipped out of bed and was headed to the bathroom not long after.

Fred busied himself by grabbing some clothes for Justin. He immediately dismissed any blue that remained, not after the fit that Justin went through where he tore and burned most of his blue clothing. God, he still remembered the utterly broken look in his eyes that day when they discovered him, utterly silent, surrounded by the scraps of shirts and jeans. He found an orange shirt that looked like it had once belonged to Nico as well as some black cargo pants that Fred recognized as a pair he'd left during their last sleepover and took those along with a pair of black boxers as he camped outside of the bathroom. When Doug Stewart walked out of his room and looked at him, Fred met his gaze evenly. The hand Doug placed on his arm was reassuring, and Doug wordlessly left.

Bolstered by this silent faith, Fred continued to sit in front of the door and listened to the sound of running water. When it stopped, Fred waited for a few moments before Justin opened the door with a towel around his waist. He handed the clothes over without speaking, and a few minutes later Justin was out and dressed, though his hair was still flecked with water.

"Your hair's getting long," Fred chuckled.

A ghost of a smile flittered across Justin's face before he said, "I like it like this."

Emboldened by his success, Fred ran his hand through the wet locks, which was followed by Justin's indignant squawk, and then he impulsively grabbed Justin's wrist to drag him down the stairs. "C'mon! After Danny got off of his high horse about proper diet, he said he found this awesome place downtown to eat. You like burgers, right?"

"Yeah," Justin said softly.

"So yeah, we're going to head down there to grab some food. Later, Mr. Stewart!" Fred hollered back as they headed out into the sunlight. Continuing his grip on Justin's arm, Fred continued to talk about anything that came to mind as they headed through town. He talked about classes and homework, about events that were happening at Angel Grove Junior High and various other things to fill the silence. His words were met with either indifference or silence, but every so often he'd get the barest hint of a smile in the faint twist of his lips, and he'd continue to chatter on just to see it again.

It wasn't long before they'd sat down at a somewhat secluded booth and ordered. Justin was fiddling with the straw on his glass of water when Fred spoke.

"No more games, Justin. What's up?"

"Nothing's the matter," he replied. "I just want to be alone."

"Bullshit." Nice wasn't going to cut it anymore. They'd spent far too long taking shifts outside of his door without success for it to work. Fred normally didn't get angry, and, hell, he wasn't, but he knew that if this went for much longer—nothing good would come. "Bullshit, Justin. Something's eating at you, and I want to know what." Seeing the firm line Justin's mouth had pressed into, Fred continued, "I know it has something to do with your friends. Nico nearly cried the last time he brought up Carlos." The name caused Justin to flinch, something that Fred couldn't help but notice and didn't comment on. "I haven't seen Tommy or the rest much either; I know Rocky and Adam are waiting until fall semester to start at AGU but they're still around." He somewhat kept in contact with that group of high school students he'd met ages ago, but inwardly he seethed when each name brought out more anger.

"What'd they do to you...?"

Something shifted in Justin's eyes, and he'd opened his mouth when a waitress came by carrying their orders. Fred cursed silently when Justin closed up again and began to pick at his food. All that work—!

As he slowly ate his own burger, Fred waited to Justin to speak. But Justin didn't seem to be inclined to, and the meal passed in silence. Justin looked to protest when Fred plopped the last of his fries onto his plate and intercepted the bill in a smooth move.

Eyes hard, Fred asked once more when the waitress walked away, "What did they do to you?"

"They fucking left me alone when I needed them," he hissed with such venom that Fred was taken aback. "No calls, no messages, _nothing_. I couldn't... I needed someone to talk to, and they all just left, and I don't see them, or they ignore me, or I can't even get close enough to do anything. I need— _needed_ —to talk them, and they just..." A growl rumbled low in his throat. "Fuck them all, they all just left like everyone else, even though they _promised_."

Fred looked at him and frowned as anger swirled at the back of his mind. "I'm still here. We're still here. We'll be here for you."

"For how long? For how fucking long before you leave me like everyone else I ever cared about?" demanded Justin. And all of a sudden, Fred saw. He saw the hurt that lay beneath the anger and the pain, and he saw to the raw little boy beneath the child prodigy. Fred moved to spoke, opened his mouth to say something, anything, when horror and shame flittered across those eyes and Justin abruptly stood and ran out.

Burying his face in his hands, Fred wondered how he could have missed this as he silently tried to hold back his tears.

  
**OoOoO**   


"You guys were there for me," Justin said. "I'm... better now."

"I'm not—we're not—letting you see them until you're really ready," Fred declared. "Screw everything else."

"And I thank you for that," he whispered.

No, Fred would never let those who had inflicted Justin so much harm come back near him yet. Not after they'd spent so long putting him back together, not when they didn't even understand what they did wrong—and not until Justin had more than glue filling in the cracks.

Justin was his _friend_ , and he'd do anything to keep him alive, whole, and hopefully, in the future, even happy.


End file.
